MKC Digitals - Digi Stamp Week 18-23 November 2018

Mari asked the Design Team to create a project showcasing what we love about digital stamps or something you can do with digital stamps that you can’t do with traditional stamps. So that is what we will be doing this week, showcasing the versatility of digital stamps.

I am first cab off the rank, so here goes. When I first heard of digital stamps on Facebook, I thought no not for me, I am too old for this technical stuff. Self-taught on the computer, managed to hold down quite a few jobs using the computer but this digital stuff; you've got to be kidding.

Well I can't remember just when or what changed by mind, but I am hooked. I love how you can resize, twist, crop, but my most favourite is merging and recently paper piecing using digital paper.

When I play with my digis I always use Publisher, I know - why, when you can just do it in Word. Well I have always used Publisher for newsletters for various groups over the years, and I only ever used Word for letters, documents etc.

Well enough of that, OK, merging is fun. I am no expert on it but as long as you put down a .jpg image and then a .png image and merge the two as if they were meant to be together, you've got a scene. This can also be done with 2 .png images as long as the .png images are not transparent behind the actual image. From what I have found the image has to be solid but the background is transparent. I could be wrong, you can correct me, I am only a beginner.

I have just looked through my folder for examples. Here is a good example of 3 single images before Mari's relaunch, merged together to make a scene. When you have the images on your working page you can use the send backward or bring forward feature to get the scene to your liking.

Paper Piecing with digital papers I have only recently played with. I have bought digital papers and even found freebies in the past to use as backgrounds and just printed them off separately, until I discovered I could place the paper down and then the image over it, not needing to print separately unless I wanted the image foam taped over the paper. Now I know that is technically merging, but here is where the paper piecing comes into it. As I said before, some .png have transparent backgrounds only, but others can have another portion transparent in it, or you can even use a photo editing program and make parts of the .png image transparent to be able to paper piece. If you go to your purchased images and move your mouse over them, there might be some there already. I have just done it with mine and found one example. Little Snowman with Cocoa, has a transparent part in the inside of the cup; this part can be paper pieced and I did it recently on my "Old is New Again" post. In my following examples, I have changed parts of Mari's image to be transparent so I can paper piece. Whatever photo editing program you have, you can Google for help if you can't find it in the program. Sometimes I prefer to Google it because the instructions are easier to understand when other people have done it, rather than rely on your photo-editing program to tell it simply. That is what I did for the free program I use - GIMP2. I don't understand much of it, but I use it to add my watermarks and now for paper piecing. I am learning a bit more technology through digital stamps. I just have to find the bits of paper I write on when working out these revelations, so I can do it again.

Flower 1 (top right) has transparent leaves already, so I placed some digital paper under the leaves. Pumpkin and Flower (top left) I modified in GIMP2 to be able to put some digital paper behind the pumpkin. Fall Floral Jar (bottom right) has been modified to put digital paper behind the vase and of course last but not least, Fall Floral Jar and Fall Floral Arrangement have been MERGED over the top of some digital paper with an added sentiment from the Fall Sentiment Collection. This can be done because the background around the images is transparent.

Here is my finished card with the last example, coloured using the Colour Palette for our Facebook Challenge in our Group page.

Now here is Flower 1 with the leaves paper pieced. It is a small gift card with the flower lifted by foam tape.

Some more examples using digital paper under images are shown below using Pumpkin Spice. In the first one I have paper pieced and in the second one, I have paper pieced and added the sunflower from Fall Floral Arrangement. I inserted the image, cropped it and resized it to hide the pumpkin, printed, coloured and cut around the petals, placing it over the finished coffee cup with foam tape.

I do think merging and paper piecing is easier with digital stamps than what it is with traditional stamping; do you agree?

Thank you reading my blog about my experience with the digital stamp world. This must be the longest post I have ever done.

I hope you will continue reading the other MKC Digitals DTs' posts on why they like digital stamps.

The list of the DT links and dates are below.

19th - Tania

20th - Charlotte

21st - Jane

22nd - Claudia

23rd -K M Meena

See you next time and enjoy your digital stamps!